To many games?

LOL ... My SWMBO is very understanding but I make sure to spend time with her when she's doing something I can share.

But, getting back to  pawnsolo's original question about how many games are too many:  there seem to be as many answers as there are players.  I find that 15-25 games is optimum for me.  I don't have trouble finding time to play any more than that (a benefit of being retired)  but with too many games I play quickly and make lots of blunders.

Lately I've lost a lot of games (only one by actually leaving a piece en prise) simply because I've allowed myself to get into inferior positions that I couldn't defend.  For the moment I've avoided starting any more tournaments till I get it together a bit, though I'm still taking individual challenges.

I was attracted to  pawnsolo's "hyperbole" tournament but I think 22 simultaneous games would blow me out of the water.

I believe it depends on the stage of your personal development and/or ability. When I first came to Chess.com, I rapidly put together a 100 game "profile" to gauge myself. I ran as many games simultaneously as necessary to maintain constant activity.

At this time, and now that I have a particular area of study (Endgames), I maintain one 14d game at a time with the potential for one 1d game run with it (when I have the time to do so, in-between moves of the 14d game).

I don't bother myself with more while my eye is focused upon growth. If you've got your skills and foundation together well enough to make a productive move with no regard for the move history (and still to the best of your ability), any number of simul-play games could be played with the same ability and/or experience requirement as one.

That's my unrated and meagerly experienced thought.

I've absolutely destroyed some folks who have 50 games going. Other times, I've had great games and/or worthwhile losses verus persons with similarly truncated lists of active games.

 If spending time wasting minutes away playing this silly game does not kill me, then woo-hoo. A part of me can't help but think that the elite  players might view this type of methodolgy pedandtic.

pawn2solo says he loves the game of chess.

He loves it so much he wants to reduce his chess-vision to pre-novice level.

I wish him all success in his journey downhill.

Of course it is his choice and his only; no one has the right to criticise it. 

I couldn't play this many.

10 sometimes up to 20 is about right for me.

lordbobbetti (1711) is currently playing 919 games

SPEEDING UP TOURNAMENTS BY ELIMINATING SUPER-SLOW PLAYERS

While acknowledging the right of any member to play as many games as he or she wants at any given time it's obvious that those few people who play more games than they can comfortably handle are creating problems in tournament play -- especially, I think, in multi-stage tournaments.

I just checked the progress of the Dream Team #2 tournament which commenced on May 7 – more than 5 weeks ago. Two sections are completed, two have some delay, and the final section is completed except for the man we're all refusing to name here who has 923 games in progress. He has finished only one game.

Neither the tournament help page/guidelines nor the advanced options indicate whether such a person can be refused entry in a tournament.

There's no comment about banning players (of course, we'd rather not) but as a method of self-defence, tournament directors might prefer to exclude somebody who will predictably delay everybody else.

(This would be a particular problem for Gold members who are permitted to play in only 10 tournaments simultaneously and who are deemed to be playing in them until they are complete, even if all their own games are finished. Non-paying members are much worse off than that—they are permitted only one tournament at a time.)

There's one way to keep very slow players at bay and that's to set a reasonably low “Maximum Average Time Per Move” in the Advanced Options.

In the case of Mr 923 anything set below 8 hours would keep him at bay. (Of course 8 hours is not unreasonable and indicates three moves a day. It sounds acceptable until you add in the amount of extra time that's been padded out by using his Vacation option to get a breather.

At the time of writing Mr 923 has only one day plus one hour of vacation time left so when he has to actually sit at the computer and play the games we may find he implodes and begins to time out.

He's not alone, of course, and any tournaments I start from now on will be restricted to players with, say, a 5 or 6 hour maximum average time per move.

When I was a kid Errol Flynn had the lead role in Don Juan and although I don't remember the movie, I do remember the closing comment:  "In all men there is a little Don Juan.  In Don Juan there is much Don Juan."

And to paraphrase that, "In all chess players there is a little Lord Bobbetti..."

My only complaint about his multiple games and slow play was that he was delaying the completion of multi-stage tournaments.  What I hadn't realised was that when he imploded and started timing out, all those tournaments would move to the second stage at the same time.

Now the number of simultaneous games I'm playing has reached 29 and climbing and I feel as though the Bobbetti in me is coming to the surface.  I'll bet there are a lot of other people who will find themselves in the same situation.

*Chuckles* (to pinch an idea from Pistoleer) you just can't please some people, can you.

I love the face like a slapped arse comment! too true. I found that playing more than 5 or 6 games at a time wasn't good, i couldn't follow the game. I play a bit more,thanthis, but some are welcome games and they are unrated.

Generally too much chess is a bad thing.Too much of anything is probably bad. Lordbobbetti has 36%time outs... (comment about the number of games played being nearly 1000 )and when I played too many i ended up with loads of timeouts too. Too many timeouts means you cant play tournaments (over 10%) .And that sucks.

If you can handle it, go for it, but personally  I don't think its something super enjoyable or that it proves your super intellegent. The notes box is a good thing, but do we really have time to note every idea in every game if we are playing 1000 games? I think not.

My wife's shouting at me now, gotta go! 

Members may be interested to read the following lively debate:

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/community/upper-limit-on-games-playing-concurrently

Lordbobbetti has now timed-out in 795 games.

How about no upper limit for unrated games for all and no upper limit for rated games IF YOU'RE A MEMBER WHO PAYS.

If you are a basic games, its capped at 50. 

Most other turn-based chess sites do stuff like this, Erik has pretty much stated that he's not a fan of that particular method, and for that I am grateful. 

As for the original question, for me, it depeneds a lot on how long the turns are. I can play more than 30 games at once if most of them are 10 or 14 days/turn. But really no more than say about 15 if most of them are in the 3 day/turn neighborhood. I like to have enough games going that when I want to play, I always have a few moves to consider, but I find that if I get much about the previously mentioned limits, my already poor play just gets worse.

 I am in that same boat.  That is too funny!

 But we DO contribute to it, this little difference still has great effect on the earth's atmosphere

Come on guys... not here as well! start a new forum would be the way.